Trailer Cache: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

While September might be a slow month for movie releases, it's one of the best times of the year to see prestige trailers. The latest? David Fincher's take on the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, staring Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton and, of course, Brad Pitt, in the titular role as a man who ages backwards.

We loved the teaser trailer that ran in front of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull over the summer, which used the "Aquarium" movement of Camille Saint-Saens' Le Carnaval des Animaux to such haunting effect. However our expectations for the film were slightly dampened after hearing about the negative reaction some twenty minutes of footage got at the Telluride Film Festival. Reportedly what was shown ended up being slow, unwieldy and stiff, a bad sign for a film that has a three-hour runtime.

The new trailer doesn't really address any of those concerns; it's slow and steady and seems to give away what basically amounts to the entire movie in a mere two-and-a-half minutes. If that's the case, we can see how it's going to drag. However, we're still pretty psyched by what we see here. Literally. Mr. Fincher's film looks strikingly beautiful (we recommend you take the time to watch the trailer in HD), and the lush photography of his longtime collaborator Claudio Miranda is already at the top of our Oscar prognostication list. Plus the CGI work is both scary good and just plain scary. Who knew that when Brad Pitt turns eighty, he'll look like the spawn of John McCain and Gollum? We sure didn't!